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Rob has worked in social housing for 30 years. He was the Head of Community Services for the first three-star ALMO in the West Midlands. The income collection team reduced arrears by £349,000 in an 18-month period.

The Audit Commission cited his work on financial inclusion as positive practice. Rob developed partnership arrangements with local organisations including a financial inclusion forum and the development of one-stop shops to improve services for residents across the borough.

Rob has established a number of in-house money advice teams, one of which identified £2m of unclaimed benefit in the first four years.

Rob is a regular chair and speaker at conferences. He formed and chaired the West Midlands Good Practice group on rent arrears and is a member of the RIEN and NeighbourhoodNet teams.

As an HQN Associate, Rob helped to develop and deliver a comprehensive service improvement plan to support a no-star with uncertain prospects for improvement council in the North West. This has radically changed performance and services, including rent collection being the highest for many years.

Rob was also the Interim Assistant Director (Housing Operations) for the North West Council. He continued to support the organisation within his role as Operations Director (North) for HQN, where he also gave feedback on draft annual reports, carried out a number of mock inspections focusing on income collection, estate and tenancy management, voids, complaints, customer access and diversity.

Rob has also carried out income collection health checks and helped to establish a service improvement plan for a housing association. He has been heavily involved in developing accreditation schemes for income and estates. Rob has supported a London ALMO to develop a raft of performance monitoring measures for income collection and former tenant arrears.

Sue has worked in benefits for over 20 years and has considerable experience of the practice as well as the theory of benefits. She has worked at a senior level in a number of local authorities and has spent several years working closely with social landlords.

In her consultancy role Sue has worked with many local authorities and specialises in designing and implementing new ways of working in response to legislation or organisational changes.

In addition to her consultancy work she is an experienced benefits trainer, writing and delivering benefits and management training for local authority benefits services, social landlords and government departments.

Sue is the author of HQNs Housing Benefit toolkit for social housing providers and has written a number of HQN briefing papers. She was a speaker at the RIEN March 2010 series of seminars.

Joy has over 20 years' experience working in the housing service. Her particular area of interest and expertise is rent and arrears management. Since joining the City of Edinburgh Council in 1982 she has had many different roles in the rents service, including court, rent collection, local arrears recovery teams and IT rent system development. She is now Senior Officer responsible for city-wide rent policy and performance.

Apart from the development and improvement of the rent collection service in her current role and providing support to neighbourhood teams, she is responsible for the following centralised rent management functions: managing rent and arrears systems; court team; rent income maximisation service, and former tenancy arrears collection.

Joy is an active committee member of the Scottish Rent Forum (SRF) and is also the Secretary of the Forums FTA group in Scotland.

Mark started working in the finance department at Wolverhampton City Council in 1976, moving to the Housing Department five years later having failed CIPFA examinations. He has since worked in housing management in a number of operational and strategic capacities. He transferred to Wolverhampton Homes, where he is currently Director of Housing, in October 2005 when the ALMO was established. The company received two-star rating in November 2007 and is generally recognised for innovation and as a top performer in income management. Mark retains the lead role for continuing to develop and improve rents management services not only at Wolverhampton but with colleagues across the United Kingdom.

Mark has also been an associate with the Rent Income Excellence Network since it was formed. He has been a regular contributor to the seminars and leads the best practice group in the Midlands. In addition, Mark analyses the performance indicators of RIEN members on a quarterly basis and is a regular contributor to RIEN briefings.

Anya provides advice and support in the development and design of HQN's rent arrears and financial inclusion training. This is part of a reciprocal partnership between RIEN and the University of Salford, which includes guest lectures delivered by Tony Newman and the joint development of modules for Salford's forthcoming Blended Learning MSc in Housing.

Anya is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Salford and has nearly 20 years experience in the housing sector. Anya has worked in both a local authority and housing association in management and policy roles. She has worked in Higher Education for the last 15 years teaching housing related issues across a number of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and has managed a range of externally funded housing research projects. She has also spent extensive time in Europe researching housing consumption on the continent.

Tony is a consultant and project manager. He manages the Rent Income Excellence Network (RIEN).

Since 2005, Tony has delivered training and consultancy for HQN and has spoken at RIEN and CLG housing seminars. Tony also carries out mock inspections and health checks in respect of income management on behalf of HQN.

Tony has extensive experience in improvement planning in income management in both a local government and social housing context. He has managed departments that have delivered substantial improvement in collection performance and customer focus.

Tony began his career as an underwriter at Lloyds of London, assessing risk on an international basis, including risks associated with community housing projects. He then joined the Civil Aviation Authority as a contracts and purchasing officer.

After a spell in senior management in the private sector, Tony then moved into local government as Credit Manager for Cornwall County Council, before becoming Income Manager for PHA, where he managed the changeover from generic housing management to a functionalised income department.

A Member of the Institute of Credit Management, Tony worked with the Institute's Education Panel to help adapt their professional syllabus to suit public sector members. Tony was also a founder member of the Institute of Public Finance's National Benchmarking Steering Group for debt management.

Tony has managed a number of complex income management and procurement projects. He enjoys using his broad base of experience to provide project management support for a range of clients including housing, adult social care and health. He has a particular interest in the opportunities to improve quality and value for money through better integration of these services.

A professional member of the British Institute of Learning Disabilities, Tony has been involved with the Supporting People Programme since its inception, working with a housing association and then providing consultancy to commissioners and providers.

During 2005/6 Tony managed a Value Improvement Project on behalf of the CLG. One of nine pilots, this project focused on improving the quality and value for money of housing-related floating support services for vulnerable people, including access to benefits advice and guidance on debt/budget management.

Bob has worked in the social housing sector since 1981 having worked as a generic housing manager within local government and a number of housing associations in the North West. Since 2004 Bob has been the Arrears Manager at Helena Partnerships in St Helens on Merseyside where he manages a specialist rents team dealing with a stock of nearly 13,000 units.

Bob has a particular interest in preventative arrears work and income management's role in the wider financial inclusion agenda.

Sue has worked in the affordable housing sector for 22 years, having started her career in the rents team at Norwich City Council. Since then she has worked as a generic officer at the City Council and the Guinness Partnership and as a generic Housing Manager and interim Head of Housing at Anglia Housing Group.

Sue completed her Post Graduate Diploma in Housing at Chelmsford APU in 1998 and is a practitioner member of the Chartered Institute of Housing. She joined RIEN as an associate in 2008 and is presently employed as the Assistant Director of Income Management at Circle Anglia, where she is the group's strategic lead for income management and has direct responsibility for income management services across East Anglia.